OKR is not a way to manage your tasks but a way to build, improve, or innovate something within your team or organization. We'll explain this further in this video (or available in text below).

One of the most common mistakes I see in OKR implementations is trying to include everything you do into your OKRs.

OKR is not a way to manage your tasks but more of a way to fix, improve, or innovate something within your team or organization.

A typical question I'm asked is: "Should everything I do be added to my OKRs?"

The simple answer is: no. But let me explain further.

First, it's important to understand that no matter what goal management framework you're using, you'll always have an operational layer that you'll work on daily.

Because that is what keeps that boat afloat — you can't escape that. A sales team will always have to sell, people need to get paid, marketing will always have to generate leads. You get my point.

When creating your OKRs, you first need to determine if your existing processes are producing the desired results or not. Are you hitting your sales targets? Are people getting paid on time? Are you generating enough leads?

If the answer is no, this is where business as usual overlaps with OKRs.

You'll need to dive deep to figure out what part of the chain is broken and set up an OKR to fix it.

Once your processes are running smoothly and there's no danger that the boat will sink, then you can create OKRs to help the company achieve its priorities.

When you've reached that point then you'll have to learn how to balance your business as usual and your OKRs.

But this is actually simple, the only thing you need to do is evaluate how much time you spend in the everyday operation and allocate the rest of your time to focus on OKRs.

If you realize you don't have any time left for OKRs then maybe that means you need to create an OKR to free up some time.

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